I built this for my own yard.

Painted Acre started the day I stood in my backyard holding a two-foot maple whip, trying to imagine it at forty feet, and couldn't.

I had a plan for this yard, or at least I thought I did: trees planted now, while I'm young enough to watch them get big. Shade over the patio by the time the kids are in high school. A screen along the back fence before the neighbors finish their addition. The trouble is that every one of those decisions gets made in year one, squinting at a stick, and you don't find out if you guessed right until year ten.

So I built the tool I wanted: take one photo of my actual yard, paint it once into a watercolor, and plant into the painting. Every plant is a hand-painted sprite with a real growth curve, composited at its true size for its age. Drag the year slider and it's the same maple in the same spot, just older. When I scrub to year 20, I'm not looking at an AI's dream of a yard. I'm looking at mine, grown up.

Plant the trees now. See them in twenty.

That's also why it's a watercolor and not a photorealistic render. A watercolor admits it is a plan. It shows the decisions, placement, scale, time, without pretending to be a photograph of a future nobody can promise you. The tool is honest because it is not allowed to imagine.

My own twenty-year plan is in here: the maples went in last spring, the redbuds go in next year, the pergola waits for year five. Painted Acre is still built by one person, which means the roadmap is short, the opinions are strong, and the email gets read. If something is wrong or missing, tell me.